Havanaise
I think it was Alexandr Solzhenitsyn who recounted the story of a fellow prisoner in the gulag who came in every night from labour with one question on his lips. ‘Is the old moustache dead yet?’ He hoped to rejoice in the death of Stalin; we should not do the same for Fidel Castro, whoever much we are tempted to.
El Jefe Commandante may well delivered his last five hour speech to his tame ‘four legs good’ brigade and to the numerous admirers he has in our country. These latter are thick on the ground among our elected representatives in Holyrood, as a glance at the adulatory statements from some MSPs show. These range from Mr Thomas Sheridan who in the ambience created by the euphoria of being in a socialist paradise has dreamed of a Cuba-emulating Scotland, to the more grating heated denunciations of imperialism that emanate from Ms Rosie Kane. This latter at her swearing-in held up a hand on which someone had graffittied ‘My oath is to the people.’ She has neglected to inform the voting paying public so far which people she means.
Holyrood’s cross party group on Cuba harbours every left wing inclined MSP who thinks he or she is on the same wavelength as the great imposter of Havana. Perhaps they feel more at home with his slogan, ‘Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing’ as distinct from the boring old democracy we practise here.
No, we should not rejoice in the demise of the last of the old time dictators as he moves slowly towards the dustbin of history so beloved of his ideological master. What we should look forward to is greater freedom for the Cuban people who have been shoehorned into a whole raft of warps – time, cultural, technological, ideological. Then they will wish a farewell to the Castro Brothers (yes, his sinister and shifty brother Raul too), and hopefully an end to the Toxic Two manipulating the poster boy of misty-eyed, wistful western wannabe revolutionaries, Che Guevara, a fit companion for the pair of them. How many of our MSPs’ thought wander towards him as they frowst in their ‘think-bubbles’?
El Jefe Commandante may well delivered his last five hour speech to his tame ‘four legs good’ brigade and to the numerous admirers he has in our country. These latter are thick on the ground among our elected representatives in Holyrood, as a glance at the adulatory statements from some MSPs show. These range from Mr Thomas Sheridan who in the ambience created by the euphoria of being in a socialist paradise has dreamed of a Cuba-emulating Scotland, to the more grating heated denunciations of imperialism that emanate from Ms Rosie Kane. This latter at her swearing-in held up a hand on which someone had graffittied ‘My oath is to the people.’ She has neglected to inform the voting paying public so far which people she means.
Holyrood’s cross party group on Cuba harbours every left wing inclined MSP who thinks he or she is on the same wavelength as the great imposter of Havana. Perhaps they feel more at home with his slogan, ‘Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing’ as distinct from the boring old democracy we practise here.
No, we should not rejoice in the demise of the last of the old time dictators as he moves slowly towards the dustbin of history so beloved of his ideological master. What we should look forward to is greater freedom for the Cuban people who have been shoehorned into a whole raft of warps – time, cultural, technological, ideological. Then they will wish a farewell to the Castro Brothers (yes, his sinister and shifty brother Raul too), and hopefully an end to the Toxic Two manipulating the poster boy of misty-eyed, wistful western wannabe revolutionaries, Che Guevara, a fit companion for the pair of them. How many of our MSPs’ thought wander towards him as they frowst in their ‘think-bubbles’?
posted by JPK @ 10:58 pm
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